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Leaving your kids outside alone?

At what age do you let your kids play outside alone and does it matter where you live? I have a five year old son, Abel. I take him out to play often but when I have to go inside, even just for a minute, I make him come with me. We live out in the woods, the main road is about 100 yards away, we park our cars up there and then walk down some wooden steps down a steep hill into the woods and walk on a short path through the woods to get to our trailor.

We don't have a fence or a real "yard", we just have our little clearing around our trailer and then woods all around us. I'm not worried about people, most people don't even know we're down here, but I do worry about him wandering off or getting into something outside that he shouldn't. My main fear is there is a deep creek down behind our house, its not quite a river but is still a wide deep creek and especially after that little girl just drowned in a creek behind her house, it makes me nervous.

My husbands mother, my husband isn't my sons biological father but he is a father to him and his mother thinks of him as her own grandchild, says I should back off a little, let him go play in the woods if he wants on his own. She is a great woman and was a great mother to my husband, but shes very laid back and has a different parenting style then what I'm used to, she let him do a lot as a kid that I would never allow. What are your thoughts?

DD, 3, and DS, 5, are allowed to play in the back yard alone but its fenced and has a padlock on the gate. Tho lately we have been not allowing it because the trashy neighbor next door swears at my 3yr old and she doesn't open her fat mouth if I'm out there.

When we lived on base we let the boys play in the park right outside the houses with the neighborhood kids... then DS2 got into trouble so we had to stop that. He was almost 9 at the time I think. We don't allow them to play outside alone here, but we live in a large apartment complex so I don't think it's as safe.

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